Review by AIM 15th February 2012

If you've been following us you'll know we're a bit sceptical about contrast ratio claims.
(see our Contrast Ratio Review).

But this is going to blow you away. We consider it an important omission from manufacturers.

Watching 3D content the contrast ratio is limited to 1,000:1.

Yes that was one thousand to one. Not 100,000:1 or some other optimistic claim.

Epson have done the right thing and quoted 3D contrast as under 2,000:1 in terms of what the projector can actually produce in a 3D mode.

So why do we say it’s lower again?

It’s one thing to know what the projector can do with all the contrast enhancing bells and whistles turned off (most don’t work in 3D modes) but you need to wear 3D glasses to watch 3D and there is the problem!

• From our research all glasses are limited to 1,000:1 CR.

This is not the end of the world as we've been banging on about "Real World" contrast ratio for years, 1,000:1 CR is plenty in our opinion.  You can still buy Data projectors with well under 1,000:1 CR. This is because in that price range they don't employ "tricks" to allow measurements of the contrast ratio to go into the stratosphere in modes you'll never use for home cinema. It's a CONtrast.

What it also means is for 3D you need not stress about the figures on the box as most projector families use the same engines, i.e. all Epson use “3-LCD”.

Brightness is King in 3D which means to us the best value in High End 3D is now the Epson 3D HD TW8000 for entry level 1080P 3D you can't go past the Epson TW5900 3D HD Projector which gets you all set up for when the real content arrives, you simply buy 6 pairs of 3D glasses at a better price as they like everything else will come down in price. Why would you have just two pairs? What happens with more than 2 people in the room?

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